Forest fire near Missoula, MT - photos

[splitterpfj]

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa319/toddecopp/forestfiretwo.jpg

 

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa319/toddecopp/forestfireone.jpg

 

These were taken just less than 48 hours ago. At this point, 2500 acres were burning, as of this morning, 10,000 acres are burning, which has caused the closing of the Missoula Airport- pilots can't see through the smoke. The bottom photo shows how brown and dry the grass is out there, as I walked, I could hear it crunching under my feet like snow. I pushed on the grass with my hand - it broke. Missoula has topped 100 degrees 18 times this year, which breaks the prior record by far, the scary part is, August is usually the hottest month for them.

 

[DHonks]

crazy! I've been going to montana for vacations for 7 years now, and it's typical that forest fires are bad every other year. I was there when it was really hot in early July, and the locals could all see this coming. I've got some crazy pictures from last year's forest fires in MT and the '05 fires in Arizona.

[bork]

Man, that's some scary stuff. I used to live in Stevensville, about 30 miles south of Missoula. The fires have been terrible in recent years. I never remember anything like this when I lived there in the late 70's, early 80's. We lived in 10 wooded acres along the Bitterroot Mountains, so we would have been very vulnerable.

[Schlitz001]

I live in Bozeman (although I'm gone on business) and late last week you could see the smoke getting thicker around town. With all the moisture we got this winter it was pretty easy to see this coming. I was planning on going camping in the Bob, but obviously those plans have been cancelled.

 

The worst I've seen is the fires around Glacier park in the summer of 2002. I was working up there at Many Glacier and we spent plenty of time just admiring the fire as the flames swept across the valley. Pretty awesome sight. Then they got it even worse in 2003 and had to shut down the park itself as a hazard.

 

They also had pretty bad fires near Bozeman in 2001.